Dizziness and Vertigo in Adolescents: Actual Epidemiological Data from Munich

There are very few epidemiological data about dizziness and vertigo in adolescents. Abu-Arafeh and Russell applied a screening questionnaire to 2,165 school children (10% of the 5- to 15-year-old children attending school in Aberdeen, Scotland) of whom 314 reported at least one episode of vertigo over the last year (18%). In Xian, China, Li et al investigated 1,567 middle school students and found an overall prevalence of vertigo of 5.6%.

We present part of the findings from a preintervention survey of 1,661 grammar school students of the 8th, 9th, and 10th grade in Munich, Germany. The prevalence of dizziness and vertigo was 72% of the questioned adolescents. Most adolescents reported multiple vertigo types. Girls (80%) complained dizziness/vertigo more often than boys (63%). The most common type of dizziness was orthostatic dizziness (52% of the students). About 60% of the students reported duration less than 1 minute, orthostatic dizziness was from shorter duration than the other vertigo types. About 50% of the students reported a frequency of more than five times over the past year. Constraints, as not being able to do leisure activities and not to be able to get up, were more pronounced for spinning vertigo and swaying vertigo. Students with any type of vertigo or dizziness reported headache significant more often than student without headache.

Vertigo and dizziness in adolescents are frequent and often associated with headache. Data as the type of vertigo, the duration, the frequency, and the associated symptoms are important to get an idea of possible differential diagnosis, but a clinical examination is needed to make a certain diagnosis. So, we cannot assure a diagnosis just by questionnaire. The most common vertigo symptom reported was “getting black before eyes when getting up rapidly,” which we can attribute to orthostatic dizziness. Spinning and swaying vertigo are less often reported, but are associated with longer duration and more pronounced constraints. This correlates with the data of the children and adolescents presenting at a tertiary center for vertigo. Spinning vertigo (49%) and swaying vertigo (35%) were the more common vertigo types here and 42% of the consulting patients also referred to suffer from headache. In 33% of these consulting patients, the vertigo was attributable to a vestibular migraine.